Contents
For the first time, scientists have established a direct relationship between the quality of relationships in a couple and the life expectancy of spouses.
There are many studies that link the state of mental and physical health. However, Danish doctors for the first time managed to trace the relationship between the quality of relationships and life expectancy.
“Which of these people do you have conflicts with – partners, children, other family members, friends, neighbors? Choose an answer: never, occasionally, occasionally, often, all the time. Such a question was included in a questionnaire for participants in a large-scale project to study the health of Danes. It started at the very beginning of the 2000s, and 10 volunteers aged 36 to 52 took part in it.
After 11 years, 422 study participants were no longer alive. Sad, of course, but nothing unusual: for such long-term studies, this is quite a normal percentage. And the attention of the doctor Rikke Lund and her colleagues from the University of Copenhagen was attracted not by the figure itself, but by its unexpected connection with the answer to the question about the quality of the relationship.
Read more:
- What and when to explain
Lund’s article in the April issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health* may be considered the first to look at the direct impact of the quality of our relationships on life expectancy. There are already a great many studies looking at the relationship between stress and health. In principle, the connection itself is clear: a high level of stress negatively affects our cardiovascular, immune and endocrine systems. And even the mechanism is generally known: in particular, an excess of the hormone cortisol plays an important role in it, the production of which is activated in stressful situations. However, the work of Rikke Lund and her colleagues for the first time directly raises the question of the dependence of premature death on the quality of relationships.
So, the study found that the answer “always” or “often” in at least one of the categories of relationships increased the risk of premature death by 2-3 times. At the same time, death did not occur at all as a result of murder or serious injuries, but for completely natural reasons (oncological and cardiovascular diseases are leading among them). To make sure that this was not a coincidence, the scientists turned to a “verification” question, which was also contained in the questionnaire: “Do you feel in everyday life that you are concerned about your relationship with someone and do you feel that these relationships require you to too many of you?” The relationship remained exactly the same: people who were worried about their relationships or felt that their relatives, friends, or even neighbors made exorbitant demands on them died twice as often.
Interestingly, to a greater extent, the quality of relationships affects the life expectancy of men. In principle, this is consistent with the already known scientific data: the male body releases more significant amounts of cortisol in response to stress. And therefore, harmonious relationships for men become literally vital. Another “risk group” turned out to be people with low income, social or professional status. Rikke Lund and her colleagues explain this by the fact that this category of people is much more prone to stress.
Read more:
- 5 anti-stress cocktails
Finally, another interesting takeaway from the study is that, in terms of longevity, being single may be preferable to having a strained relationship. In many ways, this contradicts existing ideas. A number of medical studies** consider the presence of social relationships in patients as one of the important factors in maintaining health. However, the point is probably not so much in the availability as in the quality of these relationships. Here is how physician James Hamblin (James Hamblin), a columnist for The Atlantic, comments on the situation: “In a sense, relationships can be likened to almonds. Everyone knows that almonds are good for health and can prolong life. But if you hate almonds and force yourself by eating them every day in order to live longer, then you will shorten your life rather than prolong it. One fine day, when you are choking on your almonds as usual, your blood pressure will rise and you will have a stroke.
* jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/04/02/jech-2013-203675
** See, for example, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/?report=classic#R5